According to UFC President Dana White, virtually all parties
involved probably could have handled what transpired at the end of
that period differently.

Bisping, who had been controlling the middleweight clash up until
that point, became vulnerable after losing his mouthguard late in
the stanza. Instead of protecting himself and continuing to fight,
“The Count” lobbied for a break in the action, which allowed Silva
to seize momentum.

“Bisping was way too concerned about his mouthpiece,” White said in
an interview on UFC Fight Pass. “Anderson Silva pours it on, he
hits him with the knee and... boom.”

That flying knee sent Bisping crumpling to the canvas mere seconds
before the final horn sounded. Silva then walked off, thinking the
fight was over. As chaos ensued in the cage, Silva climbed atop the
Octagon in premature celebration mode. White believes that the
former middleweight king might have had enough time to finish
Bisping had he kept fighting.

“Walkoff knockouts are awesome. Make sure the fight is over,” White
said. “I still haven’t seen exactly what happened, but he hit him
with the knee, then walked away. Herb Dean
stopped the fight and then the bell rang. If [Silva] could have
jumped on top of him he could have finished the fight. He did not.
He tried to walk away. It’s crazy.

White was not pleased that it took longer than normal to clear the
Octagon between the third and fourth rounds. Some of that falls on
Dean, the UFC boss said.

“That’s the thing. He was up on the Octagon celebrating the win,
and everybody is screaming, ‘The fight isn’t over.’ And the
commission is pulling the guys out…I don’t know why they were
allowed to come in anyway,” White said. “It was crazy. Obviously
we’ve never seen that happen before.

“It started to get a little out of hand there, [Dean] got it back,”
White continued. “He should have kept a little more control of guys
going inside the Octagon when the fight’s not over. But it was the
end of the round, so guys were coming in to do the corner work.
Thank God it held together. What a weird night.”

While Bisping ultimately survived to win a unanimous decision,
White saw the action differently than the those scoring cageside,
although that could change upon further review.

“I have to watch it again, there was so much craziness going on
after the fight, but I believe that I had it even going into the
fifth round... and I thought that Anderson Silva won [the fifth
round],” White said.